Saturday, March 04, 2006

Conduit?

From Dan Hoy's "The Virtual Dependency of the Post-Avant and the Problematics of Flarf" (Jacket 29):

What I mean to emphasize is that [Flarf] is also a conduit of corporate ideology. You might as well be using Jay Leno’s monologue to induce a meditative fugue — and what kind of sensibility is he transferring to the subconscious of those who fall asleep and slumber to his words every weeknight?

From Drew Gardner's "Chicks Dig War":

Your mission, captain, is complete:
enjoy the spoils of war.
It's so romantic.
chicks dig war (especially chicks on the pill).
The experience is just magical.
Oh, and you can get a really awesome war on.
Chicks like a nice war.

From Tony Tost's "I Am Not the Pilot":

I am fairly proficient in martial arts, but I am not a pilot.

Repeat after me, 'I am not the pilot,
I will not attempt to fly the ship.'

Folks I am not a pilot and therefore
I am not at the glamorous end of the sword.

I have no feelings for the machine.

With a little bit of Googling, the following sources turn up: Maxim online, Gregory Raj ("Guru to the Stars"), Boeing, Star Trek Voyager. These are obviously "corporate" sources in some sense. But I simply can't see how this fact explains anything about the poems in their final form. I don't see how the passages I have quoted here are "conduits" for the ideologies of Maxim, Boeing, Raj or the Star Trek franchise. But I'm willing to discuss it.

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